


The Instrument of My Destruction

by Rainne



Series: Incense and Gunpowder [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, NCIS
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, it's my AU i'll retcon if i want to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-23
Updated: 2008-02-23
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part three of Incense and Gunpowder</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Instrument of My Destruction

**Author's Note:**

> Still for [](http://gileswench.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://gileswench.livejournal.com/)**gileswench**. Pretty much ignores a pivotal plot point from Yankee White. *shrug* it’s my AU, I’ll retcon if I want to.

_Dear Willow,_

_By the time you get this letter, you should have already heard from Gibbs_.

She took a deep breath and pushed away from her writing desk. How the hell could she be expected to do this? How could she be expected to write a letter like this, knowing what was to come?

Kate tossed her pen down on the shiny surface and stood, pacing toward her window and staring down at the busy street below. The sun was shining, birds were singing, children were laughing in the park across the street… and she would be dead in a few days.

A few years ago, she never would have believed such a thing was possible. A few years ago, she had been immortal, rocketing up through the ranks of the Secret Service with her eyes on a spot running next to a Presidential limousine. A few years ago, vampires were something out of a movie. A few years ago, she hadn’t even known the name Willow Rosenberg.

Now, though, she did. And all of the knowledge that came with knowing Willow (and, by extension, Buffy Summers) was piling in on her and making it hard to breathe.

The call from the seer had come twelve hours before. She was a nice girl; Kate had met her over the summer when she took her week’s vacation and accepted Willow’s offer to teleport her to England for a week. She was glad now that she’d taken the trip; otherwise she might have died never having kissed Willow in Trafalgar Square, right under the disapproving glare of Lord Nelson himself.

Oh, Willow.

Kate leaned against the glass and stared down at the street. The call had been short and to the point. “In my dream, I saw you standing on a rooftop with two men. One had an aura of silver and pain, the other an aura of snake-oil and joy. You saved the life of the man of silver, and as you stood between them in the aftermath, death came for you across the distance, carrying your own name. This will happen. If you stand on the rooftop with these men, you will die.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Kate whispered into the telephone.

“I will not,” had come the reply, and the line had disconnected.

Now here she was, twelve hours later, her trash can full of the balled-up attempts to write her last request to Gibbs and the finished product sealed in an envelope with a post-it note stuck to the front that read simply “To be mailed two weeks after my death.”

She’d even included postage. No sense asking her mother to use one of her ubiquitous Disney stamps on a man who wouldn’t appreciate Kate Todd getting the last word in by way of Tinkerbell.

But this…

How do you write a letter to an occasional lover, someone who really could have been forever except that you just lived in two (or would that be too?) different worlds? What do you say? _Hey, just thought I’d let you know, I knew I was gonna die, but it was me or Gibbs, and I don’t think I could live with myself if I let him die just to save my own sorry skin_. Somehow, Kate didn’t think Willow would appreciate that.

With a sigh, she dropped back into the chair at her writing desk and picked up her pen again.

_I have no idea what I’m supposed to say right now, but I knew there was no way I could let you go without a proper goodbye… it just wouldn’t be right. There are things between us that need to be said, and I can’t go easily without knowing that I’ve said them, and that you’ll hear them._

_I love you, Willow, and I think I always have, since the minute I bumped into you at the Bronze that night. How else can you explain me latching onto you out of nowhere and co-opting you for a weekend out of the blue? I mean, really, who does that? (Picture me laughing at myself right now.)_

_I’m sorry things couldn’t work out between us. Having you here… that was probably the best ten months of my life. I’ve never regretted a minute of it, and I never will_.

And she wouldn’t. She and Willow were far too different to make a long-term go of things, and Willow had been too fragile after those last hard months in Sunnydale to make anything like a commitment.

Kate smiled, remembering how it had happened. Willow, after three years of long-distance Internet friendship and a couple of catch-up afternoons when Kate had happened to be in L.A., had simply turned up on Kate’s doorstep one morning in early June and asked if she could stay for a couple of days. A couple of days had turned into a week, then two weeks, and somewhere around the month mark, they had simply agreed to stop calling it a temporary thing. That was probably around the time they finally slept together for the first time.

The sex had been fantastic, their friendship had remained strong, but around the time Kate joined NCIS, things had started to go downhill. It didn’t help that Kennedy had shown up around that time, trying to get Willow back. Kate had not been pleased to come in after a fourteen-hour slog under Gibbs’s gimlet eye to find the woman she considered her lover standing in the parking garage talking to her ex-girlfriend.

Not long after that, Buffy herself had shown up in D.C., Giles and Xander in tow. The four of them had gone off for a couple of days to work things out among them. When Willow came back, she seemed lighter and happier than she had in a long time… but Kate had known then that it was only a matter of time. And when Buffy called from London with the news about the new Slayer school they were starting, the other shoe had dropped.

Kate didn’t grudge Willow her going; Willow had the same driving need to help people that Kate did, and if there was anything Kate Todd understood, it was duty. That didn’t mean it hurt any less to watch Willow draw the circle in her kitchen floor, to kiss Willow goodbye, to watch Willow vanish, and then – insult upon injury – to sweep up the salt and put it down the drain, and to set the focus crystal in her window where the light caught it nicely.

 _I know you, Willow. I know you’ll grieve and I know you’ll be sad that I’m gone, but I don’t want you to let this wreck your life. We’ve both moved on – we had to – and this is just another thing we have to move on from. We’ll see each other again eventually. I believe that. And until then… I’ll look up Tara, and tell her hello from you. Maybe she and I can swap stories about you to pass the time. I bet she’s got some good ones_.

Her landline rang; she stood and crossed the room to answer it. “Hello?”

“Kate? It’s Maureen. Bob and I were wondering if you’d like to come have supper with us tonight.”

Dinner at her cousin’s house meant Maureen had someone she was going to try to fix Kate up with. Kate usually declined these types of invitations… but this was probably the last one she’d ever receive. “Sure, Maureen,” Kate said softly. “I’d love to. What time?”

“Six-thirty?”

“See you then.” Kate hung up, glanced at the clock, and sat down at her desk again, lifting her pen for the last time.

_Be strong. Do what needs doing. Make with the world save-age, as Buffy would say. Don’t forget me._

We were amazing together. Remember that. I know I always have.

Love,

Kate.

She reached for a photo album on the bookshelf near her right hand. Flipping to the middle, she found two photographs of herself and Willow that had been taken for them by a smiling Japanese tourist in the Smithsonian. They were the only pictures she had of Willow. She pulled them out of the book, folded the letter around them, and slipped the package into the envelope addressed to England. She sealed it quickly and added a post-it to the front which read “To be mailed one week after the previous letter. Please, Mom, trust me on this.”

She put the two letters into a manila envelope, sealed it, and wrote on the front “To be opened by my mother in the event of my death.” Then she slipped the package into the drawer of her writing desk and went to change for dinner with her cousin.

\--end--


End file.
